P.V.R. (Pedestrian Vertirake) - f o r Golf greens, Bowling greens, Cricket pitches and Tennis courts. J.V.R. (Junior Vertirake) - f o r Golf course greens, Bowling turf, Fine lawns etc. T.V.R. (Tractor Vertirake) - f o r Golf course fairways, Municipal Parks, Sports pitches.

These three machines have been designed to remove all the thatch, thus stimulating recovery and growth of strong healthy grasses. You will find that each

machine will clear the difficult, dead, matted, fibrous grass that is so often so difficult to get rid of.

We have a machine for every purpose from the small golf green to the largest Municipal playing fields. One great labour saving device

we have fitted on our P.V.R. model is the very large glass fibre collecting box which saves an enormous amount of time and energy that

would otherwise be wasted in sweeping up afterwards.

Start your New Year off well by writing for full information on VERTIRAKES to:

Pattisson H. PATTISSON & CO. LTD., STANMORE HILL WORKS, STAN MO RE/ MIDDLESEX.

FOUNDED 1912

Published monthly for the benefit of greenkeepers,

greenkeeping and the game of golf on behalf of

the British Golf Greenkeepers' Association

President: Carl Bretherton

Vice-Presidents: Sir William Carr Gordon Wright F. W. Hawtree

S. Norgate I. G. Nicholls

F. V. Southgate P. Hazell

W. Kinsey P. Marshall W. Payne

W. Mountain

Chairman: I. Scoones

7 Fenswood Road Long Ashton, Bristol

Vice-Chairman: Mr. E. R. James

Hon. Secretary & Treasurer: C. H . Dix

Addington Court G.C. Featherbed Lane

Addington, Croydon, Surrey CRO 9AA

Executive Committee: Carl Bretherton (President)

G. Herrington D. H . Major V. Smith

W. Heeles A. A. Cockfield

H. Fry (Jun.)

P. McCarron J. Simpson H. M. Walsh E. James

Hon. Auditors: Messrs. Smallfield Rawlins & Co

Candlewick House 116/126 Cannon Street

London E.C.4

Hon. Solicitors: Henry Dowding. LL.B.

203-205 High Street Orpington

ine Association is affiliated to the English and Welsh Golf Unions

The British Golf Greenkeeper HON. EDITOR: F. W. HAWTREE No. 352 New Series SEPTEMBER 1974

C O N T E N T S

Page TEE SHOTS 5

TURFGRASS MAINTENANCE FERTILIZATION 7

LETTERS 15

NEWS 15

PULVERISED HORTICULTURAL BARK 19

GREENKEEPERS WAGES 23

SECTION NEWS 25

Front Cover Picture Trained earthwork collects litter. 5 h.p. vacuum sweeper with extension hose from Allen Power Equipment Limited.

EDITORIAL AND SUBSCRIPTION O F F I C E S : Addington Court Golf Club, Featherbed Lane, Addington, ^roydon, Surrey. Telephone: 01-657 0281. SUBSCRIPTION R A T E : £1.85 for 12 issues post paid. Published in i 8 i ^ r s t w e e k e a c h month. All rights reserved. Reproduction of original articles and photographs n whole or in part is prohibited. This Magazine shall not, without the written consent of the publishers first given, be re-sold, lent, hired out , or otherwise disposed of.

Anvcte0"5 and Photographs of interest are invited. I at£5? ISEMENT

O F F I C E : Chilberton House, Doods Road , Reigate, Surrey. Telephone: Reigate 43521 Tn TK P Y D A T E : l s t o f m o n t h P r i o r insertion. The • T A C L A S S I F I E D ADVERTISEMENT, write to the Advertisement Manager at the above address. insert^6 i s P e r s i n 8 le column inch. Remittance must be sent with order. Please state number of ava;i uins. r e c l u i red and write advertisement in block letters. Advertisements will be inserted in the fir.v available issue. Pnnted by Olivers Printing Works (Battle) Ltd.

" K n o w the secret of hard-wearing,

quick-growing turf?" The strong root base, hard-wearing, quick-

growing turf that sports fields require is assured using Supaturf Fertilisers.

Fertilisers for fine turf and outfields, for all seasons, pre-seeding fertilisers, top dressings and grass seeds.

Make sure you know the secret - use Supaturf Fertilisers, scientifically blended from organic and inorganic ingredients.

S U p a t U r f F E R T I L I S E R S Supaturf Products Limited., Fenbridge Road, Werrington, Peterborough PE4 6BR Tel. 72470 Sportsground, Park & Horticultural Supplies

Order now for Autumn/Winter

We are pleased to learn that Mr. Leslie Barlow of Woodlands Golf Club, Mordialloc, south of Melbourne, is back in form again after a sudden illness. Leslie Barlow is President of the Victoria Curators' Association and a keen supporter of international relationships; he is also President of the Australian Turf Management Association.

Mr. John H. Madison, Jack L. Paul and William B. Davis have produced a brand new management programme for maintenance of putting greens. They had seen thatch and compaction develope progressively and worked out the alternative.

Basically they provide light fre-quent top dressings of sand in the 0.05—1.0 m.m. range and lace it with Bentgrass seed, herbicide, insecticide, fertiliser, Dolomitic lime and mixed minor element chelates in varying proportions. When pesticides are included, they are added as wettable powders, and depending on season, various insecticides are included to make up the recommended rate.

The application works out at about 3 cu.ft. of sand and \ \ lbs. of additives per 1,000 sq. ft. This adds about of sand per year to the surface. They do no hollow tine forking to maintain weed control and add no organic matter. Grass, they claim, creates its own organic matter.

Certainly the profile of their turf after two years treatment looks a lot more homogeneous than the control treated with conventional top dress-ings.

Turning a flooded golf course into a championship tournament course in less than two months for this year's Canadian Open Championship was cited as one of the reasons Mississau-gua Golf and Country Club's golf course superintendent, Paul Dodson, was awarded a "Citation of Perfor-mance" by his professional organiz-ation, the Golf Course Superinten-dents Association of America (GCSAA).

In making the presentation during the tournament's closing award cere-money, Charles Baskin, president of the 3,700 member GCSAA, noted that not only had Dodson overcome the severe damage caused by flooding as late as May, but that he had provided a true test of golfing skills for the professionals, and an interesting course for the spectators. Those tournament spectators who saw 12 of the course's 18 holes under the Credit River flood waters on May 17 could appreciate what Dodson had accomp-lished in preparing this course for the $200,000 prize money tournament.

When the suburban Toronto course was named as site of the Canadian Open for the sixth time, Superinten-dent Dodson could not have imagined the amount of work he would under-take to prepare his course for the tops in today's professional golfing circle.

Granular Fertilisers IDEAL FOR FAIRWAYS AND APPROACHES

NOW FOR OUR F R E E

' G R E E N K E E P I N G ' J

J - A N N O C K F E R T I L I S E R S L I M I T E D , C A N N O C K , S T A F F S W S 1 1 3 L W \CATALOGUE

TURFGRASS MAINTENANCE FERTILIZATION

With grateful acknowledgement to The Pennsylvania State University, Extension Service, University Park, Pennsylvania.

A regular lawn fertilization pro-gram is necessary if you expect to maintain good-quality Turf Pound for Pound, fertilization will do more to improve poor-quality Turf or main-tain good-quality lawns than any other single management practice.

The best approach to the establish-ment of a regular fertilization pro-gram is to have a soil test made as a basis for the program. Soil testing service is available from The Pennsyl-vania State University Soil and Forage Testing Laboratory. Soil test mailing kits for this service may be obtained from your county agricultural exten-sion office at a nominal cost. The soil sample is forwarded to the University. After the analysis is made, it will be returned to you with recommend-ations for fertilization.

Grass plants normally need nitro-gen, phosphorus, and potassium (potash) in larger amounts than can be supplied naturally from the soil. Nitrogen is essential for vegetative growth and good green color as well as being a constituent of plant proteins, chlorophyll, amino acids, and other plant substances. Phospho-rus is necessary for good root development and plays a role in many vital growth processes. Potassium is also required for physiological func-

tions and promotes disease resistance and winter hardiness in grasses.

Fertilizer should be bought on a quality basis rather than on bag size. Value depends on the total amount of plant food contained in the bag and the source of the nitrogen-carrying portion of the fertilizer. Law requires that the total amount of plant nutrients be shown on the bag. Infor-mation on the bag may or may not indicate the source of nitrogen used; ask your dealer or county agent. If the fertilizer contains slow release nitrogen materials, the percent water insoluble nitrogen (W.I.N.) must be on the bag. If 35% or more of the total nitrogen is guaranteed to be water insoluble, you will be purchas-ing a quality lawn fertilizer.

Fertilizer Definitions Complete Fertilizer—A complete

fertilizer contains the three major fertilizer elements—nitrogen, phos-phorus (phosphates), and potassium (potash).

Fertilizer Grade—A fertilizer grade is a designation of the percentages of nitrogen, available phosphate, and water soluble potash in the product. A 10-6-4 grade fertilizer contains 10% nitrogen, 6% available phosphates, and 4% water soluble potash. Thus an 80 pound bag of 10-6-4 would contain 8 pounds of nitrogen (10% of 80), 4.8 pounds of available phos-phates (6% of 80), and 3.2 pounds of water soluble potash (4% of 80). Law requires that the grade be given on the container and always in the order of nitrogen, available phosphates, and water soluble potash.

Fertilizers Ratio—A fertilizer ratio indicates the relationship between the percentages of nitrogen, available phosphates, and water soluble potash found in fertilizer. A 10-5-5 grade contains twice as much nitrogen as available phosphates or water soluble potash and would have a 2-1-1 ratio. Grades of 16-8-8 and 20-10-10 would

For expert help and advice with their game, most club members have a professional to turn to.

But who can a green keeper turn to for help in keeping his turf up to par? His own professional: SAI TURF FOOD

Courses like Carnoustie and Muirfield use SAI Turf Foods. It works wonders with grass.

It comes in the form of mini-crumb granules which makes it easy to spread.

It also stays where it's put, releasing its goodness slowly into the soil to strengthen grass growth.

For stronger, greener, cleaner, healthier turf, try SAI. All enquiries to the manufacturers or to our accredited

suppliers for England and Wales:

Chipman Chemical Co. Ltd., Horsham, Sussex. Telephone 60341/5

HORTICULTURE LTD. Hortus House, 3 John's Place, Edinburgh. Telephone: 031-554 5451

also have a 2-1-1 ratio. A grade of 12-4-8 would have a 3-1-2 ratio. The simplest means of determining a ratio is to take the smallest number in the grade and divide it into each number of the grade.

Turf Type Fertilizer—A turf type fertilizer is normally defined as a com-plete fertilizer having an approximate 2-1-1 to 3-1-2 ratio, containing a minimum of 10% nitrogen, and having 35% or more of the total nitrogen as water insoluble nitrogen.

Lightweight Fertilizer—Lightweight fertilizers have the nutrients impregn-ated or carried on such materials as vermiculite, ground corn cobs, peat, composted garbage or trash, synthetic foams, and similar materials. They often have a higher nitrogen guarantee than normal weight fertilizers, and a given area can be treated with a smaller total weight of material. Many of these materials contain solu-ble (quickly available) rather than the more desirable insoluble (slowly avail-able) nitrogen.

Liquid Fertilizer—Fertilizer nutri-ents carried in suspension or in water solution are termed liquid fertilizers. The value of these materials is based on the grade and the weight of the liquid rather than the fluid content. Law requires the weight to be on the container. The plant nutrient content may be calculated in the same manner as with dry fertilizers. If, for example, a gallon of 10-5-5 liquid fertilizer weighs 10.5 pounds, then that gallon would contain 1.05 pounds of nitro-gen (10% of 10.5), .525 pounds of available phosphates (5% of 10.5), and .525 pounds of water soluble potash (5% of 10.5).

Water Insoluble Nitrogen

A fertilizer bag may carry the following label:

10-5-5 Guaranteed Analysis

Total Nitrogen 10%

4% Water Insoluble Nitrogen

Available Phosphates 5% Water Soluble Potash 5%

In the above label example, the 10% represents the total percentage of nitrogen contained in the bag, and the 4% represents the total percentage of nitrogen in the bag that is water insoluble. The percentage of the total nitrogen that is water insoluble must be calculated from this label infor-mation. This value can be obtained by dividing the percentage of water insoluble nitrogen indicated on the label by the total percentage of nitro-gen contained in the bag (also indicated on the label) and multiply-ing by 100. In this case 4% -f- 10% times 100, or 40%, of the total nitro-gen is water insoluble. Thus, this fertilizer meets the requirements of a turf-grade fertilizer. If the grade were 20-10-10, having 4% water insoluble nitrogen in the bag, the percentage of the total nitrogen that is water insolu-ble would be 4% -r 20% times 100, or 20%, and the fertilizer would not meet the requirements.

Types Of Nitrogen The ideal fertilizer program pro-

vides uniform growth over the entire growing season. The types of nitrogen-carrying materials in a fertilizer are very important in determining how such a program can be obtained. Basically, nitrogen materials are divided into two broad groups— quickly available and slowly available.

The quickly available materials are water-soluble, and the nitrogen is immediately available to the plants. Results are a sudden flush of growth and a rapid depletion (two to six weeks) of the available nitrogen. Thus, it will be necessary to make frequent light applications of these materials

Time for T E \ T U R F

.. .a fine product for fine turf! Texturf cuts down time and labour by

providing for immediate use a carefully blended and balanced winter dressing

for golf and bowling greens, and fine lawns. It incorporates superfine peat, wood

charcoal, Leighton Buzzard special sand and Winterfeed Fertiliser. You'll be delighted with the greatly improved

grass growth and colour in the Spring. Apply at 2 lbs. per square yard during

the Autumn and Winter months.

Another super quality product from CANNOCK FERTILISERS LTD, CANNOCK,STAFFS WS11 3LW

10 The British Go l f Greenkeeper